Kottayam's Tessat Space raises Rs 1 crore angel round from Xylapay at Huddle Global 2026 for satellite data without launching satellites

Tessat Space, a deeptech aerospace startup from Kottayam in Kerala, has raised Rs 1 crore in an angel round from Xylapay, a blockchain based cross-border payments platform, PTI and UNI report. The deal was announced at Huddle Global 2026, the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) startup festival held from 12 to 14 November at Kovalam in Thiruvananthapuram. According to the KSUM statement quoted by PTI, the two sides first met at the Connect funding programme during Huddle Global 2025, and the deal was closed and announced at this year's edition.

In its own announcement, as reproduced by the funding tracker Signalbase, Tessat Space says the round was led by Dr. Sooraj S L and values the company at Rs 10 crore, and that the cheque was handed over in the presence of KSUM chief executive Anoop Ambika and Ramanan Ramanathan, a Mission Governing Board member of the India AI Mission. Xylapay's own website names Sooraj S L as its founder and chief executive. The company has not said how it will spend the money, StartupFeed notes.

The pitch is an inversion of the usual space business. StartupFeed, drawing on the company's website, reports that Tessat describes its work as zero launch space data technology: equipment on the ground captures signals from satellites that are already in orbit and turns the raw data into usable insights, so no payload has to be launched. The company says the approach draws on RF engineering, signal processing and electronics design, and that it avoids the capital cost and debris of traditional launches. In its announcement it names renewable energy, agriculture and climate monitoring as target sectors.

Tessat's KSUM listing, cited by StartupFeed, names Edwin K Jayesh and Joseph Binil as co-founders, gives the incorporation date as 17 September 2024 and lists its address as the Innovation Lab at Saintgits College of Engineering in Kottayam. Jayesh leads the company as founder and chief executive and has written on LinkedIn about building it while finishing his engineering degree.

Why it matters: Huddle Global drew about 10,000 participants and more than 150 investors this year, yet PTI and UNI put the investments announced at the close at Rs 8 crore, with Tessat's Rs 1 crore and a Rs 50 lakh seed commitment to Bustler the only two named deals. A space data company raising its first reported outside money from a payments founder it met at the same festival a year earlier is a small but concrete sign of how early stage deeptech gets funded outside the big metros. The claim to watch is the technical one: whether ground based capture of existing satellite signals turns into a product customers pay for.